K-Drama Queen Of Tears Inspired From The Love Story Of Tech Giant Heiress?

Streaming giant Netflix's latest addition to its K-Drama rotation is Queen of Tears. A refreshing shift from the typical boy meets girl trope, the series has found an appreciable viewership, not just in the country but also globally. Its popularity has given way to immense conjecture on the show potentially not really being all fiction, but strongly inspired from the romance of a very real public figure.

Does Queen of Tears feature a real-life love story?

Netflix's Queen of Tears features Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Ji Won in the leading roles. Moving past the long drawn out honeymoon phase of a relationship, the show explores a marital fall out followed by the journey of healing. Many have now expressed their belief, that the series may actually be inspired from the real-life romance of South Korean couple, Lee Boo Jin and Lim Woo Jae.

The makers however, right from the get go, have marketed the show as a work of fiction, not agreeing or conceding to any claims of Queen of Tears being inspired by the life of the aforementioned couple. For the unversed, Lee Boo Jin is the Samsung heiress. In the show, Kim Ji Won plays a third-generation heiress of the Queen Group conglomerate.  Lee Boo Jin married Lim Woo Jae, a university graduate who worked as an employee of a security service affiliate of the Samsung Group.

A look at Lee Boo Jin and Lim Woo Jae's romance

Back in 1995, Lee Boo Jin had been working undercover in her own company. She met Lim Woo Jae at a Samsung Foundation charity event the same year. They tied the knot in 1999 after falling in love with one another. Lee eventually filed for divorce in 2014 taking sole custody of their son. 

Considering the makers have not agreed to having written the script for Queen of Tears, inspired by the life of Lee Boo Jin and Lin Woo Jae, the parallel plot points, mirror the trajectory of their love story, a little to closely.